All posts filed under: Main Course

Ah a recipe! And a distinctly un-springlike one at that. I hope you’ll forgive me. This is something that we cooked during our last couple of weeks in Venice: slow-cooked beef shin with borlotti beans. I don’t think I’ve talked much about our Venetian kitchen, and when I think of it now it doesn’t seem like a place where all that much cooking happened. Mostly just polished wood and a cranky gas hob. I used to work at the table there until the bench made my legs numb. And in the morning, while waiting for the kettle to boil for coffee, I’d look out at the patchwork of apartments opposite. There were habits that I learned; the student who was always at her desk by 9; the woman who filled her chilled marble window ledge with groceries; the old couple who ate at 7.30, always with the tv on in the kitchen. On the ground, Venice eludes any sense of normality. But up there, up there mornings started with radios and breakfasts and moka pots Read More

I come to you this evening with possibly the simplest fish recipe in the world. In fact, it’s barely a recipe – more a gentle reminder of something we all know: that lemon, parsley and fresh fish are three things that almost always come together to create something wonderful. And I’m talking about really fresh fish here. This branzino came from the Rialto Fish Market, bought and eaten on the same day. Before I tell you about the bass, let me talk a little about the market. It was early December when I bought these two fish, and so cold that even the seafood seemed to chatter in their shells. Yet the market was bustling at 10am on a Tuesday, and the fruit and vegetable stands overflowing. The Italians, it seems, are experts at drawing out colour in the depths of winter; their stalls full of glossy persimmons, orange fleshed pumpkins, flaming bunches of peperoncini, and radicchio di Treviso, its ruby tipped tendrils flailing over the counters. I stopped at my favourite vegetable stand and bought potatoes, zucchini and a handful of parsley. They asked Read More

Hello 2017 – and hello to all of you – sorry I’m horribly late. Everything’s gone by so quickly – Christmas, New Year, delicious food – and I’ve let them slip away because, with time, the thought of recording them all has become more and more tiresome. A job for a long afternoon of nothingness, and how often do those come about? Anyway, I’m now on a train on my way home from London and I feel the urge to write. Not quite a long afternoon, but it’ll do. I know the middle of January is hardly the time for yearly reviews, but I do want to talk a bit about my 2016 (wow, doesn’t that seem a while ago?). Now contrary to popular opinion, I liked 2016. Political strife and numerous celebrity deaths aside, it was actually quite good, and without sounding too unbearable, I think I might have learned some important things. Here they are: 9-5 (who am I kidding – 9-6) jobs are, for the most part, intolerably shit. Well, in any case Read More